This follows a long-established pattern: once the momentum of a relentlessly expansionary empire such as Brussels is halted, it does not remain stationary – it goes into reverse. When Greece departs from the euro currency, what will happen? Will some other basket-case state be shoe-horned in to replace it? Hardly – not because the madmen in Brussels are not demented enough to try it, but because the German electorate would not stand for it.

So, the Greeks’ referendum decision (kudos, once again, to the highly professional opinion pollsters who were only 22 per cent out in their forecasts this time) means that the contraction of the EU has begun. That is its real, historic significance. That is why screams of anguish are being emitted by the fanatical expansionists in Brussels who, without a twinge of remorse, provoked a bloody war in the Ukraine, in a cack-handed attempt to increase the number of their vassal states.

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That is an attitude increasingly engulfing European youth and it will eventually affect British youngsters too. The best way forward for Eurosceptics is to strain every nerve to convert younger voters to this view before polling day in the referendum. Remember the old canard that all UKIP supporters were elderly men in blazers? Apparently last May there were almost four million of them.

In mainland Europe the Eurosceptic profile is increasingly youthful. By itself, the cult of “yoof” is inane, but harnessing youthful idealism and enthusiasm to the cause of recovering our national sovereignty makes solid sense. Farage is right, too, to espouse a positive Eurosceptic agenda: let’s free ourselves to trade with the rest of the world, let’s escape from a cage controlled by elderly men in grey suits, let’s unshackle our economy from the self-interested red tape of Brussels regulation.

Of course, the Eurosceptic youth vote in countries such as Greece and Spain is unfortunately attached to looney-left parties such as Syriza and Podemos, but that is no reason for supposing it cannot mature with the voters themselves, who may be persuaded to ditch Marxist along with Europhile delusions and finally embrace a sensible course.

Youth is by instinct anti-authoritarian and authoritarianism does not come more repellent than the Brussels bureaucracy. Young people see, behind the photocalls, the large cars, the saluting sentries, the pompous jargon and the solemn press conferences, the underlying reality: this is a bunch of buffoons who have created an unworkable project that is collapsing around them and they haven’t a clue what to do. They tried to suppress economic reality by ideological imperative and now the house of cards is crashing down.

Merkel, the overrated hausfrau, Hollande, the socialist spendthrift, self-pitying Juncker, loud-mouth Schulz and all the other clowns are the incompetents who have broken Europe, while flooding it with countless millions of hostile aliens destroying its culture. It is time for Britain to get out from under this doomed structure before we are crushed by the wreckage.

I have had my doubts about this for years. The EU system is so fundamentally flawed and corrupt that it is doubtful whether it can be reformed in any meaningful way. Corruption and a chronic lack of accountability are not flaws in the system; they are there by design. The EU oligarchs have proven themselves very adept at exploiting crises to further more federal integration. This even goes for problems they have themselves created.

The entire EU system since the days of Jean Monnet has been built on creating a European superstate through deceiving the European public by presenting it as merely an elaborate free trade zone. Lies and deceit have become part of the structural DNA of the European Union.

The EU has essentially bribed the political class throughout much of the European continent, and bought their personal loyalty and support. If they become a part of the EU system, they receive well paid jobs. Moreover, they don’t have to answer to the average citizen for what they do, or how they use or abuse their power. It is easy to see why some people find this combination alluring.

The EU elites have a strong vested interest in keeping up a system that provides them with money, power and prestige. For this reason, any attempts at “reform” are likely to be purely cosmetic and designed to appease the masses. The EU has become a bureaucratic colossus. Just like all bureaucratic systems, it has a natural tendency to try to expand its reach.

I don’t see any solution to this other than to formally and publicly abolish all of the institutions of the European Union. For something like this to happen, the EU would have to face massive and sustained popular pressure throughout the continent. This is unlikely to happen without a major and prolonged economic crisis that destroys the credibility and legitimacy of the EU in the eyes of the general public. We may be heading for just such an event in the years to come.

It is not fair to blame the EU for all of Europe’s ills. For instance, low birth rates are currently found throughout the continent, also in European nations that are not members of the EU. However, the EU makes some existing problems even worse. It also adds new ones of its own making.

If we look at the big picture and the geopolitical situation, Europe as a whole faces major challenges in the coming decades. Two of the biggest ones are the escalating Jihad of radical Islam, and large-scale illegal immigration due to the population explosion in parts of the global South. The EU does not adequately address any of these threats. On the contrary, it makes them worse. The EU continues promoting Muslim mass immigration to Europe. The organization also seeks to force all of its member states to accept illegal immigrants from Africa and the Islamic world. By embracing Islamization and the gradual displacement of native Europeans, the EU has arguably become the anti-European Union.

Future historians will debate whether the EU was a good idea gone bad, or whether it was a bad idea from the very beginning. However, in my opinion, there can be no doubt that the EU as it exists today is a failure. The organization does not solve Europe’s most important challenges, and it adds new problems of its own making.

I cannot predict exactly how or when the EU will finally fall apart, but I strongly suspect that a major economic meltdown will play a major part in its collapse.